Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies

by Pamela Des Barres

  Like so many of my devoted groupie comrades, Elvis was numero uno, but Cassandra's second boi-oi-oing moment came when she heard the Beatles. "My parents were huge fans of Elvis, so I grew up loving him. The first present I remember getting was `(You Ain't Nothin' but a) Hound Dog,' and at three years old, I made up the kookiest dance for it you've ever seen. Then the Beatles came along and boom, I was a Beatle freak. I first saw them at eleven or twelve and went out of my mind. I switched all my girlfriends at school because they didn't like the Beatles, and held Beatle birthday parties with all my new Beatle pals. First I liked Ringo, then switched to George, then Paul. By the time I was thirteen, I loved John and stuck with him. He was my only rock idol I didn't meet. And my favorite. I've met all the other Beatles. I guess it wasn't meant to be," she sighs. "Besides, I'm not Asian. And it's too late now."

  There was nothing stopping the perky high schooler and her like-minded girlfriends from meeting any musician that came through Colorado Springs. "Back then you could just go backstage and knock on the door. Me and Kathy and Eileen would knock, and they'd literally say, `Come on in!' We were pretty much into making out with every boy we met. I'd be flirting, pretty soon we'd be kissing. They'd ask me back to the hotel and I'd say, `Oh, no I can't. I have to get home.' I made out with the Young Rascals' drummer, Dino Danelli, and Buffalo Springfield's drummer-I always had a thing for drummers."

  The keyboard player for Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels must have had the grooviest gift of gab because he was the first rocker to talk Cassandra into his motel room. "I got in bed and took off all my clothes except my bra and panties and made out with him, but wouldn't let him touch me. He called me for months, wanting to marry me because I was the only groupie who wouldn't actually have sex with him. Being Italian, he thought the only way to screw a nice Italian girl was to marry her, but I wasn't Italian!"

  One of Cassandra's early cohorts was her sister Melody. "Here's the difference between my younger sister and me: she was screwing everybody and I wasn't. I remember her standing on my shoulders to get into Buffalo Springfield's room, and she ended up screwing Stephen Stills and I made out with the drummer, Dewey Martin. I liked Stephen but my sister immediately went off with him and I was pissed! My parents had drilled into me that if I ever had sex they would kill themselves, so I was worried they would think I was a slut. If I came home late my mother called me a whore and I said, `I'm a virgin!' But I might as well have been boppin' everybody, because I had the baddest reputation. Kids at school called me a big slut because I was hanging out with bands, I was a go-go dancer, and I had big boobs. If you had big boobs back then, you were automatically a big tramp in school."

  I understand the process of protecting the precious pussy, because I had done the same thing by perfecting the fine art of giving head. But somehow Cassandra managed to keep even her mouth virginal while spending many hours in the sack with rock greats. "Yeah, but I'd get myself in situations. At sixteen I had a terrible experience with Eric Burdon when he was touring with War. I drove him back to the Holiday Inn, we were making out, and he said, `Come upstairs to my room.' So like a doofus, I did. We played around in bed and when it started getting serious, I said, `No, I don't do that, I'm a virgin. Leave me alone.' He said, `You're kidding!' So he took my car keys, dropped them down his pants into his underwear, and said, 'OK, if you want your keys, come and get 'em.' I chased him around the bed but he wouldn't give them back, so I ran out the door and he said, `Where are you going?' I said, `I'm going to call the police because you stole my car keys!' So he threw them and hit me really hard in the back with that sharp set of keys." Alas, there's nothing like a rocker scorned.

  Close calls such as this did nothing to stop Cassandra from more tantalizing meet and greets. When the Yardbirds arrived in Colorado, she convinced her auntie to drive her and sidekick Kathy to their hotel. "Our mothers wouldn't let us go, so my aunt loaned us these dorky skirts and sweaters, dropped us off, and said she'd pick us up in a couple of hours. We went to the bathroom and rolled the skirts up five thousand times and got all boobalicious.

  "We went to the first floor, second floor, third floor, systematically listening at doors, until we heard somebody dorking around on a guitar. We knocked and Jim McCarty opened the door in Keith Relf's room, and said, `Oh, come in!' Keith was drawing designs with Magic Markers and he gave me one. It was beyond thrilling.

  "We were two hysterical little girls, practically fainting, gushing about how excited we were, acting like dweebs, and they loved it. I actually washed Jim McCarty's hair, then Jimmy Page came in and said, `Why don't you come to my room with me?' He was the one I liked best in the band, so I was dying. But being with Jimmy Page almost became date rape, and that phrase wasn't even invented yet. When I wouldn't do what he wanted, he got pissed off and ripped off my clothes. He didn't hurt me, he was just very insistent, and wouldn't stop when I said stop! I ran out of his room with my skirt pulled up to my waist, my sweater torn, screaming, `I'm gonna call the police!' The elevator opened and it was full of people looking at me with my hair a mess, my skirt hiked up, my bra showing. After two hours we went to meet my aunt, and she said, `Oh, did you girls have a good time?"

  This particular dangerous encounter also stands out for another unforgettable reason. "Jimmy's was the first penis I ever saw. It was the longest, skinniest thing ever-like a snake or a worm. But that night didn't stop me. I continued to get myself into these situations."

  The Svengali guitarist may have shredded her auntie's mohair, but Cassandra still yearned for rock romance. "I cried and pined. I was in love with him forever; it didn't matter that he treated me like an asshole. When Zeppelin came out, I was so in love, I told everybody I had made out with Jimmy Page. I thought I was in love with everyone. I had the same teasing thing with Doug Ingle from Iron Butterfly. I also liked Eric Brann, the guitarist with the little bowl haircut. I did this with band after band after band. I was madly in love after I saw them play, then I'd have to get backstage and meet them. We'd make out and I'd maybe let 'em feel me up. I had huge bazoobies and they loved that. So I kept getting kicked out of hotel rooms, but I felt like I had made a conquest, and oh, wasn't it great!"

  Cassandra left many of her favorite musicians thwarted and throbbing after promising make-out sessions. "I think about it all the time: why did I do this? It was so attractive; they're performing, people are looking at them. I think I wanted to be them, and it was my little way of sharing a piece of them, their fame. So what if one of 'em threw me out of his room. I had just made out with him! Big deal. I got what I wanted-sorry you didn't. God! I was obsessed."

  Cassandra agrees it's a shame that the word "groupie" has slowly become synonymous with "harlot." "`Groupie' wasn't a bad word. It was almost prestigious. I thought it was prestigious anyway. I would tell everybody I was with the band! It was a good thing, like, `I'm on the road crew. I'm almost part of the band.' There was never any shame. We were their little home away from home. I took Steve Miller and his whole band to the zoo in Colorado Springs. I took Queen antique shopping all day. I hung out with Frank Zappa and the Mothers. No sex, just talking and joking-they were so wacky. I would say, `I'm a big groupie!' They thought it was so cool."

  For me it was about adoring the music, and I know Cassandra feels the same way. "The music was so magical," she enthuses. "It wasn't so much about screwing them. And it wasn't just about the fame. I had to like the music they played. I met the Guess Who once and I thought they sucked so bad. I had breakfast with them but I did not want to make out with any of them! The lead singer came on to me, but he said something that made me get up and leave the Holiday Inn coffee shop: `We're going to be bigger than the Beatles.' I was like, `Ha hah! Let's get out of here, these guys are too conceited!"

  While Cassandra frolicked at the Denver Pop Festival, police threw canisters of tear gas into the audience. While she tells this story, Cassandra imitates everyone's voices, including her own teen-queen falsetto. "One canister hit me in t
he head, I had a huge lump and the liquid stuff burned my skin. The paramedics rushed me behind the stadium to wash it off with boric acid. As I was leaving, a big black bodyguard with a giant Afro says, `Hey, you wanna meet Jimi Hendrix?' `Yes, I do!' `Well, come over here to his trailer.' So I run on over and there he is, wearing his little costume. He says, `What happened to you?' And I say, `The pigs were throwing tear gas, man.' Jimi goes on a ranting rampage about America and how he wants to get away and never come back. `Fuck those bastards! Are you OK? Let me see where they burned you.' He was so sweet." Jimi rinsed a cloth in cold water and gently placed it on Cassandra's back, then asked if she'd like to share a joint. "So we start smoking pot and just talk and talk. Then we kiss and make out, rolling around, smoking, having the greatest time. He never even tried to get serious. They call him to go on and he says, `Here's my number at the hotel. Call me tonight and we can get together.' I thought, `Uh-oh, I know what'll happen if I go to the hotel ..: Back at my seat, I told my girlfriend, `Oh my God, Liz, you'll never believe ...' and she said, `Shut up! Jimi Hendrix is about to come on!' and I yelled, `Listen! This is his phone number!"

  As we order maple tofu dessert, a swarm of attractive young dudes enter the restaurant and take over the table next to us. Black leather jackets, spiky hair, earrings, boots, eye makeup. "Obvious rock band," I comment. "No doubt about it," she agrees, and we both crack up. Why are we still attracted to rockers? "I don't know," she says. "I wonder sometimes if it's because we want to be famous ourselves." "But you are famous," I remind her. "Well, I am now. Musicians are exciting and romantic and adventurous and cool. They're everything you want to be, so you're in love with what you want to be, and you hope a little rubs off. I wanted to be creative like they were, but didn't know how it would transpire. I loved music, but didn't play an instrument. I tried guitar for five minutes and thought, `Ow! This is way too hard! My fingers are killing me!"

  More than a little bit of creativity rubbed off on Cassandra. At fourteen, she saw Elvis and Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas and, from that stimulating moment on, was determined to become a Vegas showgirl. "I thought about it all the time. When I told people, `I'm gonna be a showgirl in Las Vegas,' they laughed. I might as well have said I was going to be a Martian. Even my mother said, `You can't be a showgirl, they have to be talented and beautiful.'"

  She had already moved out of the house, but when her folks planned a trip to Sin City, Cassandra begged to go along. "We went to a big show at the Dunes, and because you had to be twenty-one to get in, I put on three hundred pairs of eyelashes and a million falls in my hair and tried to act sophisticated." As they waited for the showgirls to shimmy on stage, the host appeared at the Petersons' table and asked Cassandra if she was a showgirl. "I said, `Uh ... no.' My parents were letting me have a glass of champagne and I thought I was gonna be sent straight to jail. He said, `Stay right there,' and went to get a woman named Fluff who turned out to be the dance captain. She asked, `Are you in any shows here in Vegas?' When I said no, she said, `Would you like to be?" Cassandra's folks were moved to the best table in the house while she was escorted backstage. Fluff had her do a few steps, then told her she'd be perfect for the upcoming the summer show, aptly titled Viva Les Girls.

  Her far-fetched fantasy was in the process of coming true, but Cassandra was not quite eighteen and her parents put up a fight. "They said, `No way in hell,' and dragged me out of there by my falls. I had only two or three months left of high school, and for the rest of my senior year I threatened to run away, kill myself, and finally they said, 'OK, for God's sake, just get out of here!' The day I graduated, I threw my stuff into my Firebird and drove to Las Vegas. I started rehearsals and became a showgirl."

  Part two of Cassandra's determined dream-come-true involved the king of rock and roll himself. "Elvis came to see Viva Les Girls and my roommate was dating his road manager, Joe Esposito. He invited her over after the show. I said, `Please, please take me with you!' and since I was the biggest Elvis freak, she took me. Up in his suite, Elvis and I sat at the piano and sang harmony together." Cassandra has never told me her divine Elvis story in detail, and I'm palpitating. "That's almost as good as fucking him!" I shriek. "It was pretty hard to believe," she agrees. "I was seventeen, and I think he had respect for young girls. He was very gallant, and respected women, even though I'm sure he screwed a million and one of 'em. We went off in a corner; just me and him, one-on-one, no one else. He talked about his parents. He asked if I'd ever smoked pot or done drugs, and when I told him I had, he said, `Don't ever do it again!' He was so anti-drug. He told me he had just met Nixon, and brought out this gigantic gold belt buckle he had given him. He was so excited! He said, `The president of the United States gave me this!' He must have been thirty-five, but seemed so naive and young.

  Because of his "respect" for her, Elvis didn't escort Cassandra to his kingly boudoir. "Since Elvis knew I was a virgin, he was too damned respectful," Cassandra mourns. "I could have kicked myself a hundred times for not . . . can you imagine? Unfortunately I met Elvis before I came across the cad who devirginized me. But we kissed a lot," she smiles. "I was so busy thinking `Oh my God, I'm kissing Elvis, kissing Elvis, kissing Elvis ..: that I don't even remember how good it was. From about two until eight the next morning, we never stopped talking. He told me about spirituality, numerology, religion, and I just listened. He had this whole bizarre theory and wrote down a bunch of things for me, which I still have. It was all about how numbers correlate to letters, how they spell different things like `Christ' and `Heaven: And he gave me the most important advice of my entire life. After we sang together, he said, `You have a good voice. Have you ever taken singing lessons?' I said no, and he said, `You ought to get out of Vegas. If you stay here you'll wind up like one of these old showgirls. You won't have anything when you get older, and that'll be the end of you. " Elvis suggested that Cassandra start singing lessons right away and form her own band. "If anybody else had told me that, I would have thought they were full of shit. But he was Elvis."

  The very next day she found a vocal coach, and it just so happened a few weeks later the showgirls in Viva Les Girls were asked to audition to sing a number, and Cassandra got the part. "Not only did my money go way up, but I became a featured player. From there I moved on to Europe and became a singer in Italy. Elvis absolutely changed my life. I thought I'd peaked, reached my dream, hit the heights. I really did think I would stay in Vegas and be a showgirl for the rest of my life."

  One hot night after Cassandra trilled her new so-called lesbian number "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" alongside the rest of the sequined Les Girls, a renowned Vegas titan wearing tight shiny trousers came calling. "Our show was voted Best Show in Vegas. It was very cool and hip for the time; a tits and feathers show. Tom Jones arrived and invited the showgirls to meet him and party afterwards. I looked like such a baby with my big round face, but he was flirting with me and bringing me drinks backstage. The rest of the girls were in their thirties, one was forty, so I was fresh meat. Tom seemed gentlemanly and nice, so when he was jumpin' on me a few hours later, I thought, `Well, if I'm ever gonna do this, it might as well be with Tom Jones.'"

  'Fess up, I demand. How was Mr. "What's New Pussycat?" Cassandra shakes her head and groans, "It was not a good experience. It was painful and horrible. Afterward, I couldn't stop bleeding and he said, `You'll be OK, don't worry about it. Here's some money for a cab: When I got home and told my roommate, she said, `You'd better go to the hospital.' I ended up in the emergency room getting a couple of stitches. Talk about fun! I don't know if I was so tiny or he was so big. Of course I was madly in love with him afterward, and thought he must be madly in love with me. I thought sure we were gonna run away together and get married! I went backstage to see him the next night, but he was with his two background singers, the Blossoms, and was all over them. I was devastated. I remember sitting backstage in my dressing room for the next week playing that song of his, `I who have nothing, I who have no one.
. ."

  Cassandra relates the sad story of how on Good Friday, when she was not quite three years old, she clambered up a chair to the kitchen stove to peer at a pot of boiling Easter eggs, and tipped the scalding hot water all over her. She underwent several painful surgeries, but still ended up with unsightly scars that caused her heartbreaking embarrassment during her teen years. Not only did her first real lover turn out to be a heel, he had the sensitivity of a cockroach. "I saw Tom in Vegas years later, and I'll never forget what he said to me. I got backstage at his show and said, `Hi Tom, do you remember me?' And he said, `Yeah, you're the one with the scars.' That killed me. I was really sensitive about my scars. Almost 35 percent of my body is skin grafting, mostly on my back and shoulders. My whole life has been about dealing with the freaking scars, and it was like saying to somebody with an amputated leg, `Yeah, you're the one with the peg leg!' Really subtle, eh? I've always thought that was brutal, and it certainly ruined my love affair with Tom Jones."

  Following advice from the King, Cassandra continued singing and fronted a band called Mama's Boys with seven gay men. They were traveling the frenetic disco circuit, performing in Provincetown, Massachusetts, when she was hit with tragic news. "I can remember the exact second I heard that Elvis had died. It was very heavy for me, just horrible. I put a Joan Baez song in the show, `Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer,' and dedicated it to Elvis every night. I couldn't get through the song because I'd start sobbing. Of course I had wanted to see him again, but you could have probably reached the pope easier than Elvis."